Are you constantly tweaking your marketing, hopping from social media platform to platform, or overhauling your operations with new software? If you’re stuck fixing tactical problems that keep popping up, the real issue might be hiding in plain sight: your business model. In this installment of the “What We Didn’t Know, We Didn’t Know” series, we reveal the critical lesson that many successful entrepreneurs learn too late: your business model is driving more than you think. Discover how your fundamental model affects everything from your cash flow and hiring to the marketing strategies that actually work for your business—not just for big-list creators. Stop chasing common, yet often mismatched, advice and learn how to align your business model with your everyday operations and marketing for true, sustainable success.

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Your Business Model Is Driving More Than You Think

We are back in the What We Didn’t Know, We Didn’t Know series. Gwen and I talked about the issues that if we knew them earlier, life would be a lot different. We’re glad we learned the lessons and we’re here to share them with you. In the second installment of we didn’t know, we didn’t know is my big lesson. The last episode was Gwen’s big lesson, which is hiring isn’t the fix you think it is. If you haven’t read that, go back there. This one is, your business model is driving more than you think.

Misalignment Between Business Model And Tactics

If I understood business models before I hung a shingle, life would be a lot easier. Gwen, here’s the issue. Let’s lay it on the table. One of the easiest traps to fall into as a business owner is trying to fix problems at the tactical level. If your marketing isn’t working. What do you do? Go from social media to Substack or change your messaging. I know what you should do. You should sink $10,000 into branding because everybody cares about branding.

If your operations feel messy, instead of Asana, maybe you should go to ClickUp or GoHighLevel. That’s what you should do. Add a new system. That always fixes problems. If you can’t tell by the tone of my voice and the sarcasm dripping from my tongue, it doesn’t work that way. The problems are usually downstream. What’s driving them is your business model or honestly, it’s a misalignment between your business model and the tactics that you’re trying.

In this episode, we are talking about one of those things that we didn’t know, we didn’t know. For me, it was that. Your business model affects everything from your marketing to your operations. Whether you realize it or not. Gwen, I am going to jump in here. I want to say I’m embarrassed to say this but at the same time, Gwen, how else would I have known? Nobody talks about this stuff.

I first hung my shingle in 2007 and it wasn’t until 2021 that I recognize that at the end of the day, everything you do needs to connect directly to your business model or it’s going to fail no matter how well you do it. Is this something? You have an operations background like before you hung a shingle. You hungry shingle when you’re like twenty. Maybe you didn’t know this at some point but I feel like you’ve always known this. Maybe that’s because you’ve always been independent. When did you figure this out?

I knew it instinctively. It’s back to, I don’t know when I figured it out or when I would have been able to call it out specifically. As I said, it was more of an instinctual thing. Your business model does drive a whole lot of decisions. We often get stuck in a business model that someone else is doing and that we won’t be successful with. Not because we can’t be successful. It goes against so much of what I’m going to call our natural tendencies.

 

 

For example, I have created courses in the past but courses go against my natural tendency. Even though I am a natural instructor. That seems like that’s in conflict with one another. I’m good at instructing. I love instructing but I don’t teach courses very often. One of my natural tendencies is about context matters. That would be an example where if I build this whole business about courses and everything I delivered was a course and that’s what it went. That would go against my natural tendency of context matters.

Sometimes, that’s where the business model is missing. Now, another example and this is one that I didn’t get until you and I were working together. You didn’t get right away either. My natural way of working is so highly relational that the typical, “Let’s get a lot of people on our email list program,” doesn’t work for me, even when you do all of the right things.

Why Business Owners Don’t See It

 Before we go too far down because there’s some threads I want to pull. We’re going to need to back up about two steps. Step one is going to be why don’t business owners see how much their business model affects everything they do. Step two is to discuss what are the most common business models.

Number one, why do you not see it? It’s because we think the way that we have to deliver services is the way we have to deliver services. We assume whatever we’ve seen other people do is the way that it has to be done.

I would say yes to that. I would also say to clarify at least from my perspective. Unless you came into business the traditional way. You went to business school for first of all. You studied business models. You know what the word business model means. You studied models and then you went to work for a company. You would know what model that company aligned with. If you were in the operations or the director role, you’d have more of an idea of your business model.

Those of us who came in as coaches, consultants or freelancers, especially doing a service. I’m a photographer. I’m a graphic designer. I’m a this. I’m a that. Nobody says, “Photographers are service-based business owners.” Nobody says, “If you work one-to-one versus one-to-many,” that tracks to a specific business model. You just mentioned course creators. Info products is a business model. Your business model is how do you make your money. Gwen, nobody ever use the term business model to me.

When you become a freelancer, nobody makes you create a business plan. Those aren’t required. The good side and the bad side of being an independent contractor of any sort or owning your own business is there’s a very low barrier to entry. You can say, “I’m a consultant,” and nobody has a reason to question. You say you’re a coach and nobody has a reason to question you. The downside is you don’t always know what those words mean in the bigger picture. Gwen, because you know way more of this than I ever will. Walk us through the most common business models in your perspective.

The good—and the challenging—side of being an independent contractor or running your own business is the low barrier to entry. Share on X

Service And Product-Based Business Models

You can go really high level and say there’s basically two categories of business models. There are service-based business models and product-based business models. That would be the highest level. This is the whole thing. We can keep dropping down and down. There are probably an infinite number of business models but we start there. There’s service and product-based. When we think about product, typical product-based business models are retail. Selling to an in-consumer. There’s wholesale. Selling to a person who’s going to sell bigger quantities at a reduced cost so that someone else can sell them to an in-consumer.

There’s manufacturing. I’m taking some bunch of components and I’m going to create something different and then sell that. Usually, manufacturing also has a wholesale component associated with it. Wholesale could be buying something that’s already made and selling it to somebody else. That is often called distribution. Where someone else makes it, I take it, and then distribute it to a different set of people.

Especially historically where it was a much, much more complicated thing and we didn’t have such easy access via internet, phones, and all the rest of it. A lot of distribution models were about getting product, for instance, from Europe into the United States. They weren’t making any changes to it. Now, the big change was I know how to get it from Ireland to the United States, through customs, through all of those things and I can get it out to clients. There’s other product big or small, but those would be some of the easy standard product-based business models.

Most of us are familiar with those to some degree or another because we all buy stuff. We’ve seen it. On the service-based side, at that same very high level. Back to each of these, I can probably go 5 or 6 layers deep of how different they are. We’ve got what I’m going to call the coach world. I’m going to separate it from the consultant world. I use these terms differently. Not everyone does some of them use it interchangeably.

Coaching for me is about you as an individual person. It’s someone helping you work through your personal stuff. Consulting is usually solving a problem. You’re coming in usually to a business. I’m going to solve a problem with skills, knowledge, technology, products and all sorts of things to solve a particular problem for you that is within a certain framework. There’s advisory, which is what I do. I am helping you think through things. I’m not necessarily helping you think through your stuff. I might be, but I’m often helping you think through the issues and the problems that you have around your business, your marketing or whatever.

There’s more of an advisory capacity. These are all service-based businesses. There is what I would call large team consulting-based businesses that are a service-based business. These are the McKenzies of the world. The big names that you hear. Back to, they are bringing in people, resources, knowledge to solve a very specific problem. There is the freelancer who has a specific set of skills that they come in. They usually are functioning much like a consultant but usually are also including a little advisory in that process. They have what I’m going to call a tangible deliverable.

This is the graphic designer that is creating your PowerPoint slides. This is the web designer. This is the person creating social media for you. If they’ve got a specific spot, this is often a freelancer that’s coming in and doing specific things. They may call themselves other things but, functionally, that’s like a freelance business model. There’s also the service-based models that are training. You can be providing training coming into an environment and providing training.

You have what I call the mix. I think of them as a service model. Some people would call them product models. It’s things like course creators. They’ve got a product but it’s a product based on service and knowledge. Not necessarily a physical tangible product. A membership is another one that I feel like is a cross thing. You’re selling a particular activity result and usually set of data but it’s around service and knowledge. As opposed to like a drink in can.

There are folks that do retreat models. That’s their business model. They host retreats. They bring people together. Focus on a problem and then they go away again. The service models can be broad but in general what that is, I’m bringing knowledge to the table that is specialized knowledge in some shape, or form. I’m delivering it to another person or group of people.

Service models can be broad, but at their core, they mean this: I bring specialized knowledge in some form and deliver it to an individual or group of people. Share on X

Creator And Service-Based Business Models

Thank you for the thorough explanation. I have never heard anybody break it down into that many levels before. I’ve heard two much more simplified versions of business models. I used to work for somebody who was like, “There’s only three business models out there.” In general, how it’s been explained to me definitely project-based and service-based. It comes down to between product-based and service-based. Is it a physical product or an informational product? Can you hold the product or does the product increase your knowledge and increase your capacity? Are you selling something that you deliver or are you selling something that somebody else delivers?

In the case of physical product, are you selling something that you have manufactured and created? Which obviously would have the highest profit margin. Are you selling something else that somebody else has done? Which would have a lower profit margin but then you don’t have the requirement of having the intellectual property and all of that other stuff. It’s the same way with service. When we think of the people whose entire business is built around selling. GoHighLevel, for instance.

Technically, they are a product-based business. Where they are making their money is in the profit between what they pay to license high level and what they’re charging somebody else to license high level from them. Now, that’s an overly simplified version of what business models can be. How I think of it is all comes down to, are you a creator business or a service-based business? With creators, it’s the same thing.

We’ve got physical products and virtual products. On the service-based side, I am delivering the service or I am overseen people delivering the service. It can be on that service-based side. I work one-to-one or I work one to many. Now you understand how the agency model would work and all of that. That’s where we’re at. The reason I bring that piece up is because it was understanding it that way. It made me understand why certain operational structures and certain marketing structures work for one business and don’t work for the other.

One of the things that you’re bringing up is, if you look at businesses, there are multiple ways to slice it. When you get down to what is the business model, it’s the version of every one of those slices. Fundamentally, there only two business models. It’s service or product at the most basic level, but as you said, then there is, are we a creator? We can do that service or products or are we selling somebody else’s?

There’s lots of places. If you think of it like a beach ball. Someone else uses this for a different analogy. If you’re close enough to the beach ball, as far as you know the beach ball is only yellow but someone else is like, “No, this thing’s White.” Someone’s like, “It’s not. It’s Pink.” Everyone’s looking at their little stripe of it. Part of it is to understand what slice matters for the piece that you are making a decision on. It may be the same slice is appropriate for your technology, regardless, but it’s a different slice for your marketing plan. It’s the same slice because of the business you are or it’s a different slice because of how long you’ve been in business.

I’m going to talk about how this has affected me and my a-ha with it. Gwen, I would like to turn it over to you. You’re welcome to pick up part by what I say because you don’t know anything about what I’m going to say necessarily. Also, I welcome to offer your own insight and maybe you can tell how that happened or maybe you can’t. Since I come from a marketing perspective, it showed up for me on the marketing side.

It almost always shows up where we have the most knowledge.

Marketing Tactics And Model Alignment

Right, but I also see where it’s affected operations for my business. Even to some degree service delivery but lesser. First of all, marketing is so important because the tactics we use for marketing oftentimes, almost always, need to relate to how many people we need to be visible to in order to achieve our goals. The problem is, most of the people who are “marketing experts” are talking about marketing for one specific type of model. That model is not always yours. Everybody who reads our show a few times knows that I spent a lot of years working in book marketing.

Marketing matters because the tactics we use almost always come down to one thing: how many people we need to be visible to in order to reach our goals. Share on X

I go into writer’s conferences doing all these things. In book marketing, especially with traditional publishing, publishers want you to have big lists, big social media following. Five thousand email subscribers is a small list for an author. Publishers wants you to have 25,000 social media followers on any given platform. Bigger is better and there is no such thing as big enough. If you went to a publisher and said, “I have 100,000 people on my email list.” They’d be like, “That’s a good start. Between now and when your book comes out, we want to see you grow 10%.” Seriously.

It doesn’t matter what you tell them. It’s always a good start. The reason for this is because across the board, all things being equal, a publisher can count on an author’s audience for about 2.5% of book sales. Two and half percent of 100,000 email subscribers sounds pretty good. They all know that on social media, you’ve got not even half a person of your social media followers will convert to buyers. That’s why they need this, bigger is better.

I come from book marketing and I’m telling this to my authors, “I’m thinking I have to have a big list, too.” Authors are being told to have a big list but no I don’t. Even in book marketing, a hundred clients is a six-figure salary. I don’t need 100,000 people to find 100 authors to work with me in that regard. Even now doing community management. A hundred clients in a year would be huge for me. I no longer chase the bigger is better list.

A big list isn’t necessarily going to get me more clients. Now, I do want to publish a book at some point and I do know that I have to grow my list. Those are two different goals and it took me forever. I was spending so many years trying to figure out this lead magnet, that lead magnet and tracking my email subscribers. Without ever tracking my following and my audience without ever tracking what percentage of that audience was converting to clients. That is where I made a lot of marketing mistakes. Simply because I was chasing tactics that had nothing to do with my model. That’s the marketing side. I want you to address that and then we’ll go to the operation site.

It’s the most popular marketing model.

Product Repurchase Rate And Sales Cycle

It’s all taught by people who are selling to creators.

Also, they’re selling to folks that need that big market. I don’t know if it was you or somewhere else that I was reading this. It’s the idea of you bought the course. How many more times are you going to buy that course? Zero because I bought the course. I don’t need to buy it again. I might tell somebody that it was an amazing course but I’m not going to purchase it again.

I might buy another course when you create something new because I thought you were amazing at teaching the first course. I’m not going to pay to take that course again. Part of it is, are you selling things that are one-time purchases or are they ongoing consumables? Big lists are needed for things that are more like one-time purchases. If you’re selling toilet paper, people want that and they consume it.

Big lists matter most when you’re selling things that are closer to one-time purchases. If you’re selling something like toilet paper, people want it, use it, and come back for more. Share on X

Even if you have an 80% markup on your toilet paper, toilet paper as a product isn’t costly enough for you to serve and pay your bills on only 100 sales a day.

Exactly. You’ve got to sell thousands but people are coming back time and time again. As opposed to how often do you buy a house? Real estate agents have a different need. They need a big list within their area that they service because most people aren’t buying a new house or selling a house once or twice a year. It’s back to that business model. This is like a different slice. Is your piece that you’re buying or selling, depending on which side of the equation you’re on?

Is it something that people are going to buy again and again? You don’t have to sell market to them as often because it’s like, “I love Charmin toilet paper. That’s the one need.” They do good marketing so I remember them. I always buy that. I am also loyal to my real estate agent when I find a real estate agent, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to still buy a house every year. That’s just not it in the cars. It’s a different type of what you need.

Also, with that is, how often do you need to remind them that you exist? Real estate agents also have a different hit of, “I’ve got to stay in front of mind because I don’t know when you’re going to need to buy another house.” I always use the phrase I’ve slept since then I’ve slept a lot since then. Being top of mine over time for a long time is going to be important. I don’t need to be advertised about toilet paper. It stays on top of my mind that we’re going to use toilet paper at the house. It’s a different marketing need, also.

You’re bringing up a few things that I want to make sure that our readers are reading. One is marketing tactics and it’s very true for marketing. How often you need to reach out to individuals, and how many individuals you need to reach out to in any given time? It depends a lot on your sales cycle for how long it takes someone from finding out about you to trusting you enough to give you money. In the case of a house. That can be a long time. You’re satisfaction with this one house transaction can make or break of what I think about you for a long time.

 

 

I don’t want to hear from my real estate agent every single week because I’m not thinking about selling my house every single week. Hearing from my real estate agent a couple times a year is nice because then I get reminded right of the experience and whatever you have. For toilet paper, to your point, Gwen. I don’t need to be reminded about toilet paper very often because I either I need it. Unless I want to go to the whole family cloth thing and we’re only so crunchy in this house.

I do need to be reminded of Charmin. If Charmin wants to make sure that I buy Charmin and not just whatever’s cheapest when I go to the store. Charmin does need to get in front of me frequently. Now lucky for Charmin, they’re not the only person trying to sell me toilet paper. The grocery stores that I go to are also trying to sell something. Charmin doesn’t need to hit me quite so often but that’s important. Think about it. Houses are a great example in terms of, you don’t buy a house very often. Maybe once a decade.

Depends on who you are. Some people buy houses every three years. Also, there are people out there like if you’re selling storage units or you’re selling fire trucks. It’s probably five years in between that. Back to if you’re selling fire trucks, you don’t need every fire department on your list. You only need the fire departments within a certain vicinity of you that you could rely get a fire truck to. That is why that business model piece is so important with the marketing.

It affects everything from how often you reach them and how often you expect them to be doing business with you. Also, how many overall people you need to ensure that you have the right number of clients at any given time so that you have revenue stability. There’s that piece. You also allude to its price point. If you’re selling a house, you might only need to sell four houses a year to make your revenue goals. If you sell four houses by March, you can decide, “I take the rest of the year off or I keep doing what I’m doing because I don’t know what next year’s going to look like.”

It may take me nine months to sell the next house.

If you’re selling something very low ticket like toilet paper or in the instance of most of our readers, low ticket offers are the big thing in online business have been since 2021. There are people talking about how they have seven figure businesses selling $7 a month membership. For a long time, I had a lot of people coming to me wanting me to help them with low ticket offer. I was like, “I’m more than happy to help you do that,” because they’re like, “That’s how I’m going to make six figures.” They would have 100 email subscribers and 250 social media followers. I’m like, “Who are we selling these $7 offers to?” Even if every single email subscriber buys it, which they won’t. That’s just giving you $700 a month.

I was going to say, “Let’s just pretend like it was crazy,” and they did.

Still, only $700 a month. Does that pay your bills? They’re like, “No.” We can create that offer but we’ve got to grow your list exponentially in order to make a livelihood at that.

This is the place where I always talk about context matters. People see, as you said, the statement of, “I am making a million dollars a year selling $7 offers.” They’re like, “I can sell a $7 offer.” Part of the context is, I have 10 million people on my list. They don’t say that part because that part’s scary and not cool. It’s not easy to do. It just sounds fun when you say, “I’m making a million dollars selling a $7 offer.” Not that it took me ten years to get 10 million people on my list to be able to do that.

Operations And Automation Needs

Those are some examples with marketing. Where your business model makes a big difference. I spent years trying to figure out why I was a failure at lead magnets only to realize that the way that I deliver business like my ideal clients aren’t downloading a bunch of freebies. My ideal client has a problem and they want it solved. What they want to do is maybe listen to me on the show. Maybe read a couple of articles, but then they want to hop on a call with me and be like, “Tonya, here are my cards on the table. Can you or can’t you help me? How much is it going to cost?”

It’s the same thing with you as a service-based business owner. What I’d like to do when is let’s shift to operations. For me, how I’ve seen this play out is everybody wants to sell me a whole bunch of automated systems. They want me to be active campaign because it can do this Evergreen newsletter. If people open this email, they get that email. If they don’t open that email, they’ll get this email. If they do open that email, they get these other seven emails. Which, if I have a hands-off info product business or let’s say I’m selling lipstick. I want people to buy the red lipstick. That works fine. They bought the red lipstick. They didn’t buy the red lipstick.

If they didn’t buy the red lipstick, let’s show them an eye shadow or a brown lipstick or whatever. As a service-based business owner, I don’t need complex automations. I just need a good weekly email newsletter at most that helps people to appreciate. Either why they’re on my list or what I can do for them. I need to be having one-on-one conversations as much as possible. I can do manually versus trying to orchestrate this elaborate automation system that has its own cost of overhead to make it happen.

Also, as a service space provider, I don’t need to be on every social media channel. I don’t need to be doing all the things all the time. I don’t need 100,000 people on TikTok watching me dance and lip sync. I just need to find one channel but has enough of my ideal people. A mechanism for me building a strong enough relationship with them that I can present them with my offers and sell them.

As a service provider, I don’t need to be on every social platform or do everything all the time. I just need one channel with enough of my ideal audience—and a way to build strong enough relationships to present my offers and sell. Share on X

Operationally speaking, my business can have extremely low overhead. My business can run with just me, theoretically. I could have a half a million-dollar business just with me and maybe a VA. I could do that and maybe even have a full-time job outside of this. Depending on how I chose to deliver my services. A product-based business and eCommerce-based business specifically need a lot of automation. They need cart software.

They need like Shopify or something similar to Shopify, so people can put it 22 things in the cart. Process the credit card or send them a reminder if they abandon their cart. Offer them a discount to come back. Retarget them on Facebook and Google and all these other places like, “You forgot your cart.”

Would you like fries with that? We’ve all seen it on it Amazon. Most of our clients who bought this also purchased this.

I can’t go to my people and be like, “Most of our clients who bought a community road map also have enjoyed hiring me as their CMO for the low price of an extra $2,000, a month. It sounds good. Click here.

Not the way it works.

What have you seen operationally that depends on business models?

Everything depends on business model.

What I mean though is the mistakes.

Cash Flow And Hiring Decisions

The mistakes are not understanding that your cashflow needs to be handled differently depending on your business model.

Say more.

Cashflow is a great example because we always think cashflow is only about sales but it’s not about sales. It’s partially about sales. It’s, when does the money have to leave your hand to do whatever else it has to do? Whether it’s paying your subcontractors, buying your product or doing your other things. How long from the time that you deliver services do you get paid? There are all sorts of pieces in there. Cashflow is an example that people don’t think about but depends on your business model.

Part of your business model is how do you invoice bill and set up contracts for your services. It was one of the things that I did early on and people were still very shocked about at the time. I charged month to month for my consulting services. I have not had packages at all. People were like, “You’ve got costs.” I was like, “I have minimal costs associated with delivering my services.” Most of my cost is me. If they don’t pay me next month, I don’t have a whole lot of costs that I’m having to cover next month because someone said, “I’m no longer paying.”

What I’m not paying is myself because I’m the one doing the service. It potentially causes a different cashflow problem because I don’t necessarily know what my cashflow is going to be month to month to month. It also was a choice I could make because of my business model. That wouldn’t necessarily work for others. The choice is about how we bill, invoice, package, deliver, how we hire, and who we hire. There is almost nothing that doesn’t have an impact based on your business model.

The problem is, we either do what we’ve done before. Particularly, when we work for somebody else that we’ve seen somebody else. We think that’s the way it needs to be done or we’re following the generic best practices that are not best practices. They’re just the most common practices that we’re hearing and seeing on social media and our networking groups. Any place else that we’re getting advice. Almost everything ends up having an impact. It’s the classic thing of, “The first thing you need to do is hire a VA.” Maybe and absolutely maybe not. It depends on your business model as to whether or not that’s your best investment.

It may not be and it positively might be. Back to depending on, does your business model have lots of ongoing repetitive tasks that need a personal human touch that can’t be automated. Maybe having a VA that can go, “This is the list.” It’s a good investment, but maybe not. That comes back down to business model. The problem is that we make tactical business decisions based on what we either know or whatever one else is doing without thinking about what is our business model needs.

The problem is that we make tactical business decisions based on what we know or what everyone else is doing, without stopping to ask what our business model actually needs. Share on X

Why Business Owners Don’t Realize Business Model Impact

Why do you think people don’t realize this until they’re deep in it? Is it just because nobody talks about it?

Yes, and most people don’t know more than one or two business models. A lot of times, the two or three business models that they may know are very much aligned like where I was talking about. They’re a product-based business model or a service-based business model. I started slicing at different way. These are close but it’s the less slice versus the right slice. The changes aren’t that big. This is the way that we do that but for whatever reason, they’re in this very different world. They’re trying to apply this business model that that doesn’t work.

Early on when I started this specific business back in 2012 or whatever it was. I’ve lost track. I suggested a different way for a girl to build and she was like, “You can’t do that. It’s not ever done.” This was an industry I had familiarity with. It was like, “I understand that it’s not typically done that way but you’re also delivering a slightly different service than what most everybody else is.” Hers was web development but not web development.

The not web development piece was she was helping them get their clients and building these memberships that were huge and managing the membership. You could get a piece of the action basically a commission or a royalty-based piece. She was like, “You can’t do that.” You can. You’ve got access to all the knowledge, all of the data, and all of the information. You could build them every month to say you started out with ten members today and this month, you now have 100.

I’m taking my piece of the 90, a 10% or a 5% or whatever cut because next month, you’ve got 300 clients. It’s because of what I’m doing is why you have that. I’ve only done web development. Web development is always a project and we get paid for the project. That’s it. We didn’t know there were enough other models out there to even consider it.

That’s often where I provide value. I’m looking and saying, “This feels like this business model because as I said, her business very much was a web development business model.” It feels like a web development business model but you’re missing two or three key elements that makes your model different. It’s mostly a web development business model but not quite.

Final question. If someone is reading and thinking, “All of my marketing or things that I’ve been trying never work or my overhead seems higher than it should be for what we’re doing.” Any of those sorts of questions that may indicate there’s disconnect between their model and the tactics that they’re applying. Do you think there’s like a question they could ask themselves that might tell them whether that’s the case or not?

I don’t. Most of the time, we’re caught within our own knowledge and assumptions.

The whole reason I asked you that question, Gwen, honestly is because I was thinking in my head as we’re talking like, “How could I have known this earlier?” I could not have. Somebody else had to explain this to me.

There’s a place, like what we have on our website on Everyday Effectiveness, that you can get a clarity call. You can go to www.tonyakubo.com/Clarity. That’s what you need. You need outside perspective to help you understand. Maybe the thing that you’re looking at is not the thing that you need. We usually promote our one question email but this isn’t necessarily a question that you’re going to be able to ask yourself and figure out on your own.

You need outside perspective to be able to see it. It needs to be with someone who has enough broad perspective. This is the place where sometimes you’ll be like, “I have this great mentor in my industry.” Yes, but the problem is they’re seeing all the same things that you are. They’re not asking questions that they would never dream of asking.

That is so true. Gwen, you wrapped us up better than I could have. I agree with you. I was like, “Maybe Gwen’s going to drop some pearls of wisdom that I have not yet gleaned from her.” I’m a smart person. There is no way I would have known this without somebody else bringing my attention to it. This is the second of What We Didn’t Know We Didn’t Know series. Next up, we are going to talk about why smart business owners or veteran business owners still fall for bad advice. That is a lesson that Gwen didn’t know she didn’t know. Join us next time.

 

Mentioned in This Episode

• ClickUp
• GoHighLevel
• Gwen Bortner on LinkedIn
• Tonya Kubo
• Tonya Kubo on LinkedIn
• Everyday Effectiveness
• www.tonyakubo.com/Clarity

 

About Your Hosts

Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.

Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.